The Doctor and the Lamb
by Xzeihoranth
Summary: Short little story written while I wait for the 50th anniversary to air. On the run from herself, Elizabeth stumbles into a place that doesn't exist.
1. Chapter 1

"Elizab..." Booker was interrupted by a fit of coughing. As Elizabeth hurried to his side, he hauled himself up and spat a glob of blood over the side before falling back down with a groan. She told herself to breathe, that it was just like all the other times she'd pulled him back together, but when she lifted his shirt up to get a look at the wound, she knew it was over. His stomach had been punctured: if the blood loss didn't kill him, the acid would do it slowly and more painfully. "No...no. It's not going to end like this." she said, her voice cracking in desperation. "It can't end like this!"

He almost smiled. "I'm sorry I can't make it to Paris with you," he muttered, leaning his head back against the railing, his breathing already shallow. "Won't even get to find out what the old bastard was yammerin' on about..." Elizabeth sniffed. _Don't you dare cry,_ she told herself furiously. "Can you...can you do me one last thing?" he said with a cough. She looked at him. Her vision blurred for a moment; she cursed under her breath. "Can you hold my hand til it's over? Always been afraid I'd end up dyin' alone." Booker held up his right hand weakly and she clasped it with one of hers. She stroked his cheek with the other, unable to hold back the tears but unwilling to let them fall. "I never got a chance-" Another sniff. "-to thank you." she whispered.

"Don't mention it." he said faintly. "Promise me you'll try 'n' be happy, okay kid? I'd hate f'r a smile like yours to go to waste." She nodded; that was all she trusted herself to do. "That's that then." he sighed. "G'bye, Elizabeth." He loosened his grip, and left. A drop of water splashed upon his face as she bowed her head.

After a time, she stood up and gazed at the remains of her tower. Her face darkened, then she remembered the Whistler. She knelt down to retrieve it from where Booker had dropped it before he collapsed. As she picked it up and made to get to her feet, her heart skipped a beat as her eyes met Booker's empty ones. She reached out and closed them in a final gesture of farewell.

She stood at the bow of the zeppelin, took a deep breath and played four final notes for Songbird.

Elizabeth passed by several of herself as she wandered through the sea of doors. Each with their own Booker. Each one cut her like a knife, cut her deeper as she discovered what the man she had barely known either forgot or chose not to tell her. When she reached his office, she broke down and wept beside her own crib. She didn't know if she was crying for him, for Anna or for herself, but it felt good, even if no one was there to judge or comfort her. She was alone.

Finally, she dried her eyes on the bedsheets that she wasn't even sure were there, looked around the tiny room for something that might trigger a recollection of having seen it before, and, finding nothing, opened the door to his prison. She wasn't surprised to find a hole in the wall, nor was she surprised to find the Luteces waiting on both sides. She didn't say anything to either of them, but her hopes of a silent boat ride were dashed by Rosalind.

"Everything in its place."

"Everything, except for one man."

"The wrong place at the right time."

"Right for who?"

"Shut up." Elizabeth said.

They docked in silence. She climbed the ladder and turned around, only to find them still there.

"I do apologize." Robert said self-consciously.

"Are you planning to apologize to every one we meet?"

"Do you think I should?"

"It'd be a waste of time."

"Then I shall."

She had no patience for their banter. She stormed off, wondering darkly as the clouds above if she could somehow punish the Luteces for their role in all this. She nearly slipped upon the stone steps and sat there, close to boiling in her own rage. The door above her was open ever so slightly though, and she heard voices. Her voice. And his. Another knife cut through her heart, but she had to see. Would she let her hug him? To hold him in her arms and forgive him, like she could never forgive her own father?

Elizabeth scrambled to her feet, anger forgotten. She rushed up the stairs, this time careful not to trip and land flat on her face. She didn't wait, couldn't wait to try and compose herself. She charged through the door and found herself knee-deep in a pool of water. There were six others there, all herself in different clothes. There she was in the dress she'd worn when he'd quite literally fallen into her life. There she was, covered in Daisy Fitzroy's blood. There she was, in a darker blue outfit than she'd ever seen, and far more revealing than she'd ever considered. There she was without her jacket, although thankfully also without the hole in her back for the...no, no more thinking about that. There she was in the dress she'd used to wear when she was younger: so clean and white and innocent.

The first, the last and her doppelganger in the middle of the crowd were all bent over something, holding it underwater, firmly but sadly. The Booker she'd heard was nowhere in sight. Elizabeth's heart thumped painfully. _Smother_, she'd heard herself say. Heard him say.

She couldn't be there any longer. As the three murderesses let go, she pushed past them in a blind panic. She didn't know if the door on the hill would lead anywhere or leave her in an endless void. She didn't care.

She fumbled madly with the handle.

Nearly screamed when someone put a gentle hand on her shoulder.

Shoved the door open.

Tumbled through.

Fell down on alien soil. Too tired, too terrified to look up.

A sonorous ominous bell tolls in the distance. Then, footsteps and a voice. A young voice. "I...but...how did you...What?"


	2. Chapter 2

Elizabeth struggled to her feet and turned to face the source of the voice. The man's arms and legs looked somehow too big for him, and he was running his fingers through his long brown hair as he looked at her. "That's...not possible. Not even remotely 'oh, 99 times out of a hundred this hatch won't burst open and let a thousand gizka loose on the holo-psycho-graphic manifestation of a planet that's completely ceased to exist' possible." he blurted.

"Where am I?" she panted.

"You don't know? How could you not know? You're the one who came here!" he said, pointing a finger in her face. She slapped it away angrily.

"I didn't _mean _to come here. I just wanted to go somewhere; ANYwhere, besides that..."

"You don't understand. This place is sealed off from the rest of creation. You need a very special machine to get in here, and there's only one left!" He glared at her. She glared at him. His expression softened. "You don't know. You stand there, completely oblivious to the hundreds, no, thousands, no, MILLIONS of fundamental laws of reality you just broke to come here!"

"Really? And what gives you that idea?" Elizabeth asked sarcastically.

"Okay, yeah, new plan..." he muttered, somewhat taken aback. "Hi, I'm the Doctor!" He held out a hand and beamed. She looked at him in bewilderment. He lowered his hand slightly and explained, "Now you go 'Hi, I'm...' er, whatever your name is, and we shake hands, we talk, we..." She turned and walked away. "Oi! You can't just leave! I mean it; there's nowhere to go! Well, there's lots of places, but you can't get to any of 'em!"

"Want to bet?" she retorted and kept walking.

He ran up from behind and stood in front of her. "All right, look." She folded her arms impatiently. "We may have gotten off on the wrong foot just then, but I mean it. You can't just come in here like that..."

"Why not? It's what I do." She tried to move around him but he blocked her off. "All right, Doctor," she said. "You first. Who are you and where are we?"

"Hey, that's not fair, I asked first." he said.

"I don't care. Where are we?"

"It's...well, it doesn't really exist anymore; this is all from memory. It's my home planet. At least it was, before it-" He made a noise she could only describe as 'boosh' and an equivalent hand gesture.

"Your home planet."

"That's right, yeah."

"You expect me to believe you're some kind of alien?"

"Not if you don't want to. Does make the whole two-hearts thing a bit hard to explain once you take that out of the picture."

"Two hearts?"

"Yup. I'd let you listen, but I left the stethoscope back in the control room."

Elizabeth shook her head. "This is all a bit much to take..."

"Hey, I know. Why don't you answer some of my questions now? I've answered at least thirteen of yours."

She looked for a rock or something to sit on and noticed the dust marks on her dress. She leaned down to brush them away. "Why not? I can already tell we're not in Columbia, so I'm guessing you're not a Comstock man."

"Comstock? Columbia? Who are they?" he asked.

"Not who, what. At least Columbia. Though I'm pretty sure Comstock would qualify as a what too, now I think of it."

"Oi, focus! Rambling's my business. It's my life, actually." the Doctor said.

"Sorry," she apologized, not quite sure if she meant it. "I've had a rough couple days. There's nothing like having a sadistic surgeon treat you to some primitive electroshock therapy to try and make you a better slave, only to have the man you spent five months waiting for come in and rescue you and _die _several hours later. Not to mention discoveringyour true nature as a reality-hopping bastard, and the man you watched bleed out in front of you was actually your father who sold you to a religious psychopath in order to pay off his gambling debts." She had been pacing back and forth restlessly as she said this, and stopped in front of the now rather awestruck Doctor. "That answer your question?"

"Nnno, actually. Just raises more. Look, do you think you could start at the beginning?"

She sighs. "Not like I have anything else to do..."

Several minutes and explanations later, Elizabeth was now trapped in a hug from the Doctor, who kept muttering 'I'm sorry, I am so sorry' over and over in various permutations. "It's not your fault," she offered weakly. "It's not as though you were there."

"I could've been." he said as he pulled away. "I could've stopped those Luteces from damaging reality like they did."

"What's done is done." she said before mentally kicking herself for quoting them. "Can I ask a question now?"

"Sure. Fine. Whatever you like." he said instantly.

"Where are we?"

"Ah!" He offered his arm, which she took with some trepidation. "It's a partial replication of the planet of the Time Lords, based on my own memory-patterns and sculpted into a semirealistic representation by the TARDIS herself. I say semirealistic, because as big as the TARDIS is, she's not quite up to holding a planet inside her. Not all at once. Least not with all the other stuff running as normal. Basically..." They'd reached the top of a hill and he paused to watch her reaction. "This is Gallifrey."

The Citadel of the Time Lords towered before them, encased in a massive glass bubble (although Elizabeth was sure it was fancier than glass). The burnt-orange sky and the rust-colored soil contrasted harmoniously with the blue of her dress. The fields of red grass stretched for miles upon miles, and the silver-leaved forest caught the morning light just so, so that it looked as though it was ablaze.

Elizabeth was speechless, breathless, gazing in unceasing wonder at the sights of the Doctor's home. He smiled in the way old men smile when remembering times long past, as indeed he was. "Like I said, it doesn't really exist anymore. It burned in the heat of the Moment. I come here to think, you know, to get away from it all. You can stay here if you like, unless there's somewhere you need to be..."

"Not anymore." she murmured.

They stood there, side-by-side, watching his memories, until time was rewritten and she was gone.


End file.
